Skip to main content

Player Profile #11: Richie Barker

 


It's not easy to briefly sum up this Offley legend although a number of his team-mates offered their opinions.

Is bellend one or two words?

Dependable but temperamental.

A fucking diva. 

The Bunny Slayer.

At various times in his career Barker has played a central role in four run outs in a single innings (you're just an amateur, Danny), made the club's highest individual score, disappeared without trace down the order and gone five years without a 50 and also taken more wickets than anyone else in club history despite possessing no discernible ability with the ball.

It's also probably fair to say he's made more unhelpful observations than anyone else in the history of Offley & Stopsley while tour shirts with the names Mariah and Precious suggest he can be a little bit high maintenance at times on account of occasionally carrying on like a menstrual teenage girl (Cheers, Boaty).

With over 630 wickets to his credit he has somehow claimed 150 scalps more than anyone else. 

The vast majority of these have been via deliveries that did not turn (a reasonable percentage of them did not actually pitch) or featured victims of such limited ability hellbent on launching the ball into a different postcode when their chronic lack of talent would have made simply laying bat on ball something of an accomplishment.

In fairness this does not cause him any significant embarrassment. 

Shame is something only good bowlers need concern themselves with.

It's genuinely not easy to describe Barker's batting. He has more runs for the club than anyone but Steve Bexfield, scored 15 centuries and was the first to reach 10,000 runs (The cunt actually had a T-Shirt printed to commemorate that achievement!!!!!).

Unfortunately for one reason or another he has spent the past six years hiding down the order like a tart in the witness relocation program. 

It's a long time to have spent on the batting blob and although he recorded a first half-century since 2016 at the start of this year it's probably fair to say that his best days have long since drifted away on the breeze of one of the rockets he used to launch in the direction of Offley Place.

Despite having taken over 190 catches Barker's fielding has now declined to the point where there's probably a very good joke about a statue-like diva with a Wheel-Cher punchline.

In 2021 he has dropped all but one of the chances that have come his way (helpfully the one he clung on to was off his own bowling) and seems to have a pathological inability to take any catch off Jamie Cummins, something the bowler has taken note of.

He is invariably stationed at slip under the pretence of offering advice about field settings and bowling changes. He disguises his lack of speed by diving for the ball regardless of whether or not he can reach it, thereby allowing the man at gully to chase after it. 

That man is usually Mark Tattersall. 

Barker finds this arrangement a lot more amusing than Tattersall does as he lies chuckling on the ground while Tattersall trundles off in expletive-laden pursuit.

Did You Know: He literally cannot be relied upon to organise a piss up in a brewery - he has arranged tickets for a test match in the non-drinking section of Trent Bridge (as part of a stag weekend) and organised a tour to Minehead at a hotel with an attached nightclub which was not actually open.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The People's Champions

"We fight for lost causes because we know that our defeat and dismay may be the preface to our successors' victory." A day out that was confidently expected to end around lunchtime eventually drew to a close in the early evening as heavy underdogs, Offley & Stopsley C.C., otherwise known as the People's Champions, took their leave of Knebworth Park having reached the club's first final since 2008. Unquestionably no one was more surprised at making it through to the final than the team themselves, the semi-final victory prompting a flurry of hastily rearranged plans. Ultimately they were not victorious on the pitch - not exactly a shock as they were up against a side six divisions above them in the Saracens League, a gap that will be confirmed as eight divisions once the tables are finalised on Saturday night. Yet at the end of a torrid season where the club flag has been subjected to shot and shell, it was heartening to know it still fluttered defiantly in the...

iBat; iBowl; iPad

  OSCC, 71 all out, got about halfway against Leverstock Green, 155 all out iPad At the captain's request (for a direct line please dial 0-9 for Wardy) I'm not allowed to mention what effect Saturday's result has had on our survival prospects. However, I think I am free to point out this challenging mathematical poser, namely what would happen if you took the points we have accumulated in the Bedfordshire league (depleted by 10 after Sunday's concession) and added them to those we have accumulated in the Saracens League? Answer: we'd still be pretty severely fucked.... Things did not begin well on Saturday.  Richie Barker missed out with a nasty toe injury (laughably sustained attempting to bowl seam in the nets) and Danny O'Brien was forced to withdraw on the morning of the match after a tough week at work. Roger Piepenstock, a man who lives within a stone's throw of the ground, although perhaps not if that stone is being thrown by an Offley fielder, subseq...

The Triangle of Triumph

OSCC, 116-6, beat Shillington, 115-9, by four wickets OSCC, 174-6, beat Harpenden, 166 all out, by eight runs OSCC, 245-6, beat Hexton, 152 all out, by 93 runs Having started the season by losing six out of six - and conceding a seventh to boot - Offley kicked the season into life with a three-game sweep of assorted opponents. The week that began with the unfortunate Bus Wanka saga ended with the victory beers overflowing. Captain Roger Piepenstock secured the first win of the season against Shillington, having been elected to the position on the grounds of his patrician bearing and the fact he was the only one with a coin (a golden guinea presumably) to toss up. Manouvering his fielders with a combination of frantic arm-waving and polite requests one that conjured images of a pissed up usher at a garden party, Captain Piepenstock ensured Shillington were restricted to 115-9.  Mark Kirkman and Shane Jones were the pick of the bowlers with three wickets apiece but there were also tw...